Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets
Aired 9-11 and 16-11-2004 21:00 - 22:00
on BBC1, UK
Science fiction drama documentary in two parts, 60 minutes each, produced by Impossible Pictures for BBC1, Discovery Channel and ProSieben
Summary
Combining the latest knowledge of science and technology with spectacle digital effects, the programme reveals the dangers five astronauts are facing when going on a six-year space mission to explore other planets in our Solar System.
The crew takes off in their one kilometre long nuclear powered spaceship, Pegasus, which carries all the various landing crafts and technological equipment their mission will require. First stop is Venus, where they have to deal with a surface temperature on 500 C degrees, clouds of acid and an atmospheric pressure that normally would squeeze the air out of any construction. Next stop is Mars, where a solar storm forces the crew to seek shelter inside their specially designed lander Ares.
Third stop is on one of Jupiter’s moons, the volcanic Io - but first their spaceship encounters an asteroid belt and a temperature of 2 million C degrees, when they are going close to the Sun to take the benefit of the sling-shot, which will help the spaceship to make the next 800 million kilometres to Jupiter. The danger here near Jupiter before landing on Io, is a magnetic atmosphere, which produces levels of radiation 500 times the dose that would kill a human.
On the fourth task the crew explores the rings of Saturn, taking examples of ice and rocks during a spacewalk. Fifth task takes place at the edge of the Solar System in an ice cold atmosphere around Pluto, where the astronauts leave a telescope, whose “assignment” is to search for other Earth-like planets. The crew now heads back for home and on their way back to Earth they make their final task landing on a comet taking samples in search for organic life.
Quote:
Executive producer, Tim Haines of Impossible Pictures, explains: "In a unique collaboration between Hollywood's entertainment industry, the world's main space agencies and the cutting-edge digital effects talents of Framestore, this series is the most accurate vision of a human exploration of our neighbouring planets ever created."
Series Producer, Chris Riley, continues: "We worked closely with cosmonauts, astronauts and space agencies in Russia, Europe and the USA to bring a gritty reality to the series that reflects over 40 years of their experience of human space flight and robotic exploration of the planets of our solar system."
Director and Writer - Joe Ahearne
Producer - Chris Riley
Executive Producers - Tim Haines, Adam Kemp
Associate Producer - Duncan Copp
Art Director - Jamie Campbell
Composer - Don Davis
Director of Photography - Nick Dance
Production Company - Impossible Pictures
Digital Visual Effects - Framestore CFC
Cast top
David Suchet - Narrator
Martin McDougall - Tom Kirby, Mission Commander
Rad Lazar - Yvan Grigorev, Flight Engineer
Mark Dexter - John Pearson, Flight Medic
Joanne McQuinn - Zoe Lessard, Mission Scientist in geology
Michelle Joseph - Nina Sulman, Mission Scientist in biology
Colin Stinton - Fred Duncan, Flight Director
Mark Tandy - Alex Floyd, Chief Scientist
Hélène Mahieu - Claire Granier, Flight Surgeon
Lourdes Faberes - Isabel Liu, Flight Dynamics Officer
Notes top
Sorry folks, I don’t have the DVD, so I can’t show you any spectacular screen-shots. If any of you have some and would like to share them with the rest of us, I’ll gladly put them up on the site, providing they come as jpg-files.
Awards:
The programme won the 3rd annual VES Award (Visual Effects Society Award) in 2004 for outstanding compositing in a Broadcast Program.
Released:
- on DVD in US 24-05-2005 (Voyage to the Planets and Beyond - region 1 - 120 minutes) and in Germany, release date? (Space Odyssey - Mission zu den Planeten - region 2 - 112 minutes).
According to some posts on the Imdb message-board the US DVD-version might have skipped the journey to Pluto which takes part in the original UK tv-programme and it also might have a different narrator. Looking at the run hours for the German version, it seems that it could have left something out, too... I guess, you'll have to look for a BBC region 2 version, if you want to be sure to get a Suchet-version, I just can't seem to find that out there...
BBC published a book to go with the programme... ISBN 9780563521549
References:
VES awards.com
22nd October 2007 © All rights reserved
Photo upper right corner: US DVD cover
